


Gold Gilt on Molten Basalt

by ckret2



Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [10]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Dubcon Cuddling, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Non-Human Courting Practices, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a 4k word exercise in making a rock covered dinosaur sound sexy to a 3 headed space dragon, lava is sexy right? lava is so sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 22:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20983751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: After spending days internally twisting themselves into knots trying to suppress how much theywantRodan, Ghidorah goes on a flight to the edge of the atmosphere to burn off some pent-up energy. It doesn’t help. Maybe what they really need is an excuse to let themselves do what they really want to do.In other words: this is the one where they finally… cuddle.





	Gold Gilt on Molten Basalt

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on July 21.
> 
> This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is: Ichi’s the one that developed the crush on Rodan and Ni & San are sorta just going along with it; and Ghidorah is a mild empath (telepathically reads/projects emotions) but needs to make head contact for it to work.

The delusion that this little island could be big enough for them was fading by the day. 

Maybe it would have been big enough if they didn't know about the wide universe hidden behind the blue sky—if they thought that dome was the ceiling to reality. Maybe it would have been big enough if they thought the ocean stretched off endlessly in every direction with nothing else out there. Maybe it would have been big enough if the world didn't keep encroaching on their small patch of land.

But it did encroach.

* * *

The machine makers were tentatively rebuilding their mechanical hives on the southeast side of the island—which was fine, if they wanted that patch of turf. On behalf of their red sprite—who probably didn't yet understand the threat machine makers posed—they had graciously ceded the southern share of the island, beyond where the volcanic rock ended, as the machine makers' sovereign territory, where they could do whatever they wanted and build their mechanical hives as tall as they pleased.

But they crept in toward the volcano. They sent flying machines without pilots—too small to be weapons, so they were probably spying machines, the machines with electric eyes that telepathically sent what they saw to other machines that the machine makers could watch. They were used to being watched—they knew the only time there weren't tiny eyes observing their every move was when they were on a dead planet or drifting between worlds—but the pests could mind the borders of their territory better and keep their damn distance. They were constantly swatting the electric eyes back to the machine makers' side of the island.

More and more often, they found themselves irritably pacing the island, watching the machine makers' hives distrustfully. The electric eyes creeping into their territory riled them up. The buzzing boats digging into the edges of the island from every damn direction riled them up. The wave after stinking wave of rotten fish that washed ceaselessly onto the eastern shore riled them up.

And their red sprite—dripping lava from his wings in red and orange like rivulets of sunset when he rose from his nest, twisting and wheeling over the ocean with the power and grace of a waterspout, crying his name so it carried across the sky like a trumpet heralding his own arrival—their vicious gorgeous red sprite, he riled them up the most. Like static building in their body that they had no means to discharge.

They were oversensitive to the smallest stimuli, snapping aggressively at a breeze through the trees below, hissing and raising their wings to threaten the tide washing on the shore. Their nerves were frayed and frazzled. They wanted to taste ash and fire, they wanted to burn the world down. They wanted to get in a damn good brawl and crawl home missing half their teeth and a head.

The encroachment that finally broke them was the sound—so deep they felt rather than heard it, carrying from a quarter of a continent south—of the little king, announcing his location to the world. They couldn't take it. They couldn't stand this little island on this little planet. They needed to fly.

"Hey," they said. They had learned a bit of the red sprite's language, basics like _sky_ and _sun_ and _fly_ and _beach_—or maybe it was _sand_?—things they could point at and ask about; and one word they'd both adopted as the look-at-this signal, the pay-attention-to-me signal. "Hey." They were laying flat on the ground, their feet tucked under their body, slowly lifting their wings to stretch straight up until the backs of their wings almost grazed each other.

The red sprite lifted his head from whatever he'd been exploring in the trees and hopped a bit closer, head tilted that way he did when he was curious.

"Hey." They paused, wings stretched as high as possible.

Then they snapped their wings down so fast lightning flashed between them, and they shot straight into the clouds. Giddy smugness pumped through them at the sight of the red sprite jerking his head up so fast that he fell on his back. No one else on this world could pull a move like that, could they? No. Only them. And he knew it. Their heart pounded so hard they could feel it in their wings.

Then they were rising through the clouds and couldn't see the red sprite's stunned face; and they pumped their wings, climbing higher and higher, until the air was so thin it was a strain to flap hard enough to fly through it, and the blue ceiling faded into infinite black.

###

Meanwhile, at the Monarch Outpost 56-B surveillance station, three camera monitors were laughing so hard they couldn't breathe as they replayed a clip in slow-motion of Ghidorah popping off the ground like a jack-in-the-box, so fast that his necks and tails, pointing straight down, dragged behind his rising body.

They almost forgot to call in the alert that Monster Zero was on the move again.

###

They had to fight hard to stay this high. The thin air around them tricked them into trying to breathe even though they knew they wouldn't get a good breath. Their wings burned with the effort of keeping them aloft despite almost nothing to pull on; it was harder to hover at the edge of the atmosphere than it was to shoot out of it and keep going.

They _should_ have shot out of it and kept going.

They should have left and found another world to burn down.

Instead they jumped out of the atmosphere and curled through empty space, like a fish leaping and spinning out of water with the sun shining on its scales, and fell back into thin air, diving until the wind caught under their wings again and carried them back up.

The thin air was hot but felt cold for its thinness; it was the kind of cold that didn't suck out their heat but trapped it inside their body, making them feel like they were burning up. All the same, it felt good to be at the edge of the world with the naked stars above them.

About half again the distance they'd already flown from the surface, they saw something silver glitter in the distant sky. They flapped fast, trying to hold still long enough to see what it was. It was metal—the machine makers had satellites? The sky beyond this planet's atmosphere had been clear and empty when they'd first arrived; now the machine makers had already littered the sky with their contraptions. And they'd slept through this dangerous technological jump. How far out had the machine makers been? Were they on other worlds yet?

Surely not. Their weapons would hurt more if they were that strong.

But then, there was that bomb they hadn't seen the body of, only its explosion—the one that had killed all the life around them, even nearly the little king. That weapon _did_ hurt more. It just didn't hurt _them_.

Yet.

They sank back down under the atmosphere; with a hard snap of their wings, sailed out into space, gnashing their teeth and spitting silent lightning at the distant satellite; and sank down again. They _could_ reach it if they wanted; but in the time it would take to fly there, their rage would have burnt out and it wouldn't be satisfying to destroy it.

They plummeted toward the ground, twisting in the air. For a moment they could gasp in a full breath, before the speed of their fall took the breath from them once more. They didn't catch themselves until they'd nearly reached the clouds. The force of the air filling their suddenly spread wings felt like it was ripping apart their shoulders, and the pain was excruciating and beautiful and focusing.

They flew through the clouds, collecting static and condensation on their scales. The air crackled, whirled, and darkened around their wings, granted its own life as they stirred it with their flight. 

It wasn't enough.

They roared in frustration, twisting through the clouds, biting them apart as they darkened and darkened into a proper storm. Thunder pounded around them as they snapped at each other's necks, snapped at their own tails.

The machine makers were out in their oddly triangular aircraft. Here for _them_, no doubt. The machine makers loved harassing them with their aircraft. Although they usually only had the courage when the little king was around. Oh, they craved a fight like that. Maybe _that_ would burn them out. But he couldn't be near; he'd been much too far when they'd heard him last.

They were desperately tempted to hunt the little aircraft. The aircraft weren't terribly maneuverable and only average speed, but they were small. If they tried to catch them in their teeth and claws instead of just blowing them out of the sky, the hunt could last a while.

But not with machine makers on their red sprite's island. He was weaker than them, and if they decided to retaliate...

Damn the red sprite, then! If he wasn't strong enough to look out for himself, it was his problem!

No. No. He didn't even understand what the machine makers were.

They caught one of the aircraft in a claw, turned to face the rest, shook it—this is what happens to machine makers that try to intimidate them—and dropped it in the water. That was all. A warning.

They turned toward their island. They were exhausted from playing at the edge of the atmosphere without breathing for so long, their muscles were aching and warm, their scales cold from the rain and rushing wind. They'd tired themselves out as much as they could without getting into a real fight.

And still, they wanted wanted wanted things they couldn't have.

###

As they approached the island, their red sprite unexpectedly came out to meet them in the storm, flying so fast the ocean beneath him changed direction where the wind beat it. For a moment of heady euphoria, they thought _he'd_ come to give them the fight they needed, to try to claw them open while they tried to bite through his stone armor. They'd twist around him and tumble into the ocean with him and sink to the bottom—

But he didn't attack. He pulled up short, flapping in place, and shouted, "Bad!"

They stopped, rattled out of their dark reverie with one word. "Bad." Them? For leaving? For going to the edge of the atmosphere? For crushing one machine maker? "Bad what?"

"Bad—" The red sprite said a word they didn't know yet. They tried to repeat it, dubiously. He let out a long sinking note they'd come to associate with frustration, and said, "Sky water!"

Oh—the rain. They repeated the new word he'd taught them, First jerking up toward the clouds demonstratively. The red sprite chirped an irritated confirmation. "Bad. Rain."

No, he'd never liked getting rained on, had he? It had to be pouring on his island. They stammered, "Fly—sun," not having any better words to reassure him that they could get rid of the rain. He stared at them hard, but then chirped a confirmation and turned toward home.

They looked up at the clouds.

And it was a good, hard rain, too. Refreshing. Oh well.

###

It took them several hard flaps to blow back enough clouds to open up a decent-sized eye in the storm over the red sprite's volcano. A few stray clouds would pass over, probably—nothing they could do about that, especially if they were no longer powering the storm and making sure it maintained its rotation—but only a light sprinkle instead of a downpour. He'd find that acceptable, wouldn't he?

Even though it had taken less than a dozen flaps to push back the rainclouds, their wings and back screamed. First the effort of their strenuous flight, and then the unfamiliar unnatural work of flapping away storm clouds, straining muscles in ways they rarely moved. When they landed heavily on the island they immediately dropped to all four and leaned the majority of their weight forward on their wings willing to burden their wings just a little bit more to spare their back the strain of balancing out their weight. As exhausted as they were, though, their tails twisted and something burned and knotted low in their abdomen. _Why_ had the red sprite come out into the storm like he was ready to fight them? Why did he have to taunt them like that? If he hadn't, maybe simply being on the same island as him wouldn't make them feel so constricted on the inside that they felt like they could barely move...

But he wasn't on the island. Was he? Not that they could see. Perhaps he'd flown inland to wait until the storm was over? They cawed toward the mainland, a wordless carrying query.

They heard a chirp from the volcano, and climbed up.

The red sprite was in the lava, submerged to his beak. Only his horns and eyes were visible, peering balefully up at them.

Second snorted, nearly amused despite himself. Third dipped down and snaked closer, stretching over the lava where the heat radiated up into his neck in order to look at the red sprite—far closer than First would have dared to allow himself to get; their heart pounded faster as First saw the red sprite's face through Third's eyes. "What?" Third asked him.

The red sprite lifted his head just enough to answer. "Rain," he said sourly.

First looked up. It was hardly misting. Second watched while First analyzed the weather, then said, "Small rain."

"Small rain is rain." He sank back into the lava.

How had he flown halfway up the continent in a hurricane for them? Was it because they made him? Was it because he wanted to if it was for them?

Half jokingly, they spread a wing over him like an umbrella. Their shoulder ached.

He inspected his new canopy; and then, slowly, climbed out of the lava. Their breath caught. He was _glowing_, red and yellow and orange, his entire body radiating fiery light. He stretched his wings, dripping lava like molten gold; their heart pounded faster; he shook off the excess lava in a shower of ruby red sparks that stung their wing. A delicate layer of darkening rock formed in thin flakes atop the molten lava, as fine and intricate as lace made of stone. Still striped hot red and cooling black, he tilted his head at them quizzically.

Second headbutted First. First snapped shut his dropped jaw.

They'd automatically let their wing slide aside so they could watch the red sprite with all six eyes; with his umbrella gone, he shuffled to the edge of the volcano’s crater, seeking shelter from the faint rain with them. His heat seeped into their chest. They leaned over him, stretched their wings loosely around the crater. If they touched him now, while his molten armor was still malleable, the shape of their scales would be pressed into his stone skin.

Their tails twisted and untwisted.

They stared down, all three necks curved so their faces pointed toward him like the tips of a tri-taloned claw preparing to seize up a prey. Their wings fanned out wide over the mouth of the crater, practically wrapping around the red sprite. He looked so small with his wings pulled in.

He looked up at them. As though he was waiting for something from them. Poor little wet thing, in need of protection from the rain. How could they refuse? (The question echoed in two voices through their minds; Third asked it jokingly, knowing they only needed an excuse, any excuse; First asked it as though in a trance, hypnotized, powerless to pull away. Second, silent, studied the knot in First's throat and the way their sore muscles twisted with tension under the red sprite's gaze.)

First bent down, reaching toward him, hesitated when Second hissed in dismay, then slowly completed the motion anyway. He gently slid his snout under the red sprite's beak, and then down his throat, rubbing over the temporarily-softened ridges on his chest; until First's forehead was pressed flush to the point where the red sprite's lifted beak blended into his arched neck, where he could feel the red sprite's throat move against the spot in between his shut eyes as he breathed in and out. It was an offer of his mind—an offer to let the red sprite feel what he felt, that longing, that adoration, that tumult of panting _want want want_ that tortured his thoughts. The red sprite went still, his face framed between First's horns, glancing baffled between Second and Third. First flicked his tongue out, brushing the still-cooling lava on his abdomen; he tasted like feldspar. Tentatively, Third leaned forward as well, tasting the side of the red sprite's face before nuzzling against his closed wing, dragging his face along the surface so the sides of his closed teeth rubbed rasping against the stone. After a moment, Second gave in, curling his long neck over the red sprite's shoulder and down his back, pressing in between his wings, tongue flicking to taste the air over the small of his back.

Theirs now.

Their tails untwisted, sliding apart and curling around their body to cross the red sprite's back, tugging him closer still. They pulled their wings in, sweeping them around the rim of the crater until they embraced the red sprite, one lifting up to curl over him and keep out the rain, surrounding him protectively—possessively. Theirs.

But they could faintly feel his fear mounting in their foreheads. He held himself taut in their hold, trembling slightly.

_Why?_ They were shielding him, weren't they? First was even offering his _mind_ to him. There was no place in the galaxy where he should feel less fear. He was supposed to feel safe.

His fear left them disappointed—_crestfallen_, in one case—but none of them detected surprise in each other. On some level, they'd known he wouldn't understand, hadn't they? They could never have offered one of themselves like this to someone who would actually understand what they were offering. They could only give him a mind because he didn't actually know how to take it. 

Reluctantly, they slid their heads off of the red sprite.

They'd permitted themselves to learn so little about this world. How did the creatures on this planet show each other they were safe? Had they ever noticed other red sprites showing each other affection? They looked down at him, trying to guess from his anatomy what sort of comfort gestures his species used; he looked similar enough to them that they could only think of their own gestures, which he'd already refused. What about other creatures? Even if they were different species, usually creatures on the same planet had _some_ similarities to each other. They struggled to think of anything they'd seen any of the other creatures of this world do to comfort each other.

The red sprite stared up at First, and then their other two faces, shivering. What was he feeling now? They'd only have to press a head up against him for a moment to check, but—no. Not if the first time had scared him. They weren't even sure what part of it all had scared him. They didn't have the words to ask; they didn't know the words to describe fear; they didn't even know how to tell him that they were trying to shelter him—they couldn't say _safe_. So they sat back on the rim of the volcano, folded their wings in, and looked down at him, feeling foolish and frustrated. Their tails twisted around each other again.

After a moment, he scooted closer, hopped up on the rim, and pressed his shivering body against theirs. They froze; then slightly lifted the wing nearer to him to see if he wanted under it or if that was part of what had frightened him. He gratefully pressed close to their side beneath Second and looked up at them.

They looked back, waiting—relieved that he wasn't too scared to be near them. He was even still willing to touch them. (To touch them!) It was up to him to take the lead now. _They_ understood that they were a stranger in a strange land, for they had been a stranger in a million strange lands before; they were used to aliens, they understood they couldn't assume that an alien's behavior meant to the alien what it seemed to mean to them. But the red sprite couldn't have that knowledge, and surely didn't think that he might have to analyze their behavior beyond his own assumptions to deduce what it was they'd meant to show him. He had to make all the moves, then; and they would learn to copy from him, the same way they were learning his language.

He lifted his head, hesitated, then stretched his neck up and started nuzzling his beak against their scales. They ignored how sharp his beak was—they were _sure_ he wouldn't dare bite—and drew their wing around him loosely. Was he grooming them?

It wasn't until he tried to prod between two of their necks that they realized that at some point their heads had twisted around each other. They blinked, looking around the island, suddenly disoriented; which field of view was whose? They were a mess of knots, inside and out. They forced their necks to untangle.

They couldn't stop thinking about how warm he was. They could feel through every individual scale that touched him, and every one was on fire. Even with the red sprite pressed to their side, they still desperately wanted something they did not have.

And yet, for the first time in days, they began to relax. Their heart slowed back down. He nuzzled his beak against them, around the bases of their necks and shoulders, and between his touch and his warmth their sore muscles began to loosen.

They stayed together until the last of the rain stopped; then the red sprite wiggled out and stretched his wings. They flinched in surprise, staring at the red sprite's newly-solidified armor. Curled over one shoulder and down his back, smudged on his opposite shoulder, and stamped on his chest, were three faint golden impressions, gilted onto his stone armor.

Theirs now.

They looked at each other. Their scales were thinly crusted with black-gray volcanic rock, in thin outlines around where they'd pressed against the red sprite: down the underside of Second's throat, along the side of Third's face, across the top of First's snout and head. His now.

The red sprite twisted around, tilting his head, trying to see what was on him that they were looking at; when he'd twisted far enough to see the gold on his back, he chirped, looked up at them, and glanced between their heads. "Down!"

"'Down'?"

He picked up a rock and flicked it at First's neck. "Down."

Slowly, First lowered his head and looked at the rim of the volcano between their feet so the red sprite could inspect him. The red sprite studied the trace of volcanic rock on top of his head, then chirped, hopped forward, and headbutted First's forehead. For the briefest moment, First's mind exploded with the red sprite's amusement and delight. He shut his eyes and basked in the echo of it as the red sprite withdrew.

Second and Third watched as the red sprite hopped around the rim and took off to patrol his territory. Thin sunlight flashed off the gold on his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/186440043227/gold-gilt-on-molten-basalt). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


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